What AI Means for Contact Center Jobs: What the Evidence Shows and How to Prepare

Few questions worry contact center agents more right now than this one: will AI take my job? Headlines swing between predictions of mass job losses and promises that nothing will change. The truth, based on the evidence so far, is somewhere in between, and understanding it helps both agents and leaders prepare.

What the numbers say

The number of jobs is expected to shrink, slowly. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of customer service representatives will decline about 5% from 2025 to 2035. That’s a real decline, but a gradual one, not a sudden collapse.

There will still be many openings. Even with that decline, the BLS projects about 289,500 job openings each year on average, mostly to replace people who change careers or retire.

Companies aren’t planning to remove people entirely. In a 2025 Gartner poll of customer service leaders, 95% said they plan to keep human agents. Gartner also predicts that by 2027, half of the organizations that expected to significantly cut their customer service workforce because of AI will abandon those plans.

Customers still want people. In a large Gartner survey, 64% of customers said they’d prefer companies didn’t use AI for customer service. Their top concern was that AI would make it harder to reach a person, and 53% said they’d consider switching to a competitor if a company used AI for customer service.

How AI affects the work agents do

AI can make agents more productive. One of the largest studies so far, covering more than 5,000 customer support agents, found that access to an AI assistant increased the number of issues resolved per hour by about 14% on average, and by about 34% for newer and less experienced agents. The study also found improved customer sentiment and better employee retention. Experienced agents saw little change, likely because the AI was spreading the practices top performers already used.

Simple contacts are shifting to automation. Questions like order status, password resets, and store hours are increasingly handled by chatbots and self-service. See What AI can and can’t do today.

The contacts left for people are harder. As routine questions move to self-service, agents spend more of their time on complex problems, upset customers, exceptions, and situations that need judgment. That can make the work more meaningful, and more demanding.

Less time on busywork. AI summaries, suggested answers, and automatic note-taking reduce typing and searching, freeing agents to focus on the customer.

Skills that are growing in value

• Empathy and emotional intelligence: calming upset customers and handling sensitive situations
• Complex problem-solving: working through issues that don’t fit a script
• Judgment: knowing when to make an exception, and when to escalate
• Clear writing: for chat, email, and reviewing AI-drafted messages
• Working with AI tools: using suggestions wisely, catching AI mistakes, and knowing when not to trust them
• Product and process knowledge: the deeper expertise that AI depends on

New roles opening up

AI also creates new kinds of work in and around the contact center, such as:

• Knowledge base managers, who keep the information AI relies on accurate
• Conversation designers, who shape how chatbots and voice bots interact with customers
• AI quality reviewers, who check AI conversations and correct mistakes
• Analysts, who turn contact data into insights and improvements
• Specialist agents, who handle complex, high-value, or sensitive customers

Experienced agents are often well suited to these roles, because they understand customers and processes better than anyone.

For agents: how to prepare

1. Learn the AI tools your company uses, and get good at them.
2. Build your strongest human skills, such as de-escalation, problem-solving, and clear communication.
3. Go deep on your products and processes. Expertise is hard to automate.
4. Volunteer for projects, such as testing new tools, improving knowledge base articles, or mentoring new hires.
5. Ask about career paths. Find out which roles are growing in your organization and what it takes to get there.

For leaders: how to manage the change responsibly

• Be honest with your team. Uncertainty breeds fear and turnover. Explain what AI will and won’t do, and how roles may change.
• Start with tools that help agents, not just tools that replace contacts. See Starting small with AI.
• Invest in reskilling. Train agents for harder contacts and for new roles like knowledge management and AI quality review.
• Plan workforce changes carefully. Where fewer agents are needed, natural turnover, redeployment, and retraining are often better options than sudden layoffs, which damage morale and knowledge.
• Keep the path to a person. Customers value it, and removing it can cost you business.
• Recognize that harder work needs more support. When agents handle mostly difficult contacts, burnout risk rises. See Reducing burnout and turnover.

The bottom line

AI is reshaping contact center work, and some routine jobs will decline over time. But the evidence so far points to a transformation rather than a replacement: fewer simple contacts, more complex ones, new tools, and new roles. The agents and organizations that adapt, by building human skills and using AI well, are best positioned for what comes next.

What to read next

• Starting small with AI: how to introduce AI responsibly
• Chatbots, voice bots, and agent assist explained: the main types of contact center AI
• Reducing burnout and turnover: supporting agents through change

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Customer Service Representatives
• Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond, Generative AI at Work, National Bureau of Economic Research
• Gartner, Gartner Predicts 50% of Organizations Will Abandon Plans to Reduce Customer Service Workforce Due to AI (June 2025)
• Gartner, Gartner Survey Finds 64% of Customers Would Prefer That Companies Didn’t Use AI for Customer Service (July 2024)